


and i was strong, strong in the sun

by friendly_ficus



Series: from a much outdated style [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: AU where they're basically gods, Gen, too many commas and an overabundance of metaphor, vague nods to canon and even vaguer nods to d&d
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-04 08:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16343354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: The stone tunnels seem to shift under their feet, the shadows darker than they were a moment ago. There's something moving down the tunnel, just out of reach. The air smells of rock and the tunnel widens, becomes a cavern with a large structure at the center, rising up like a sentinel in the sunless underground.Or: Tired of the problems of surface living? Come hunt a dragon in the dark!





	1. voice from the mountain

  Pyrah simmers under Keyleth’s skin, lava moving slowly through her veins and bones and sinew. Her sleep is useless, rest twisting away as she dreams of ruin and flames and death - she wakes with the hot taste of wrath in her mouth and sits up, predator-still. Keyleth’s hands ache to be claws, to be talons, to tear and rend and scar. She looks around, eyes like an eagle as she counts, one, two, three, four, Percy and Grog and Scanlan and Vex, where where  _ where-  _ a gauntleted hand comes down on her shoulder.

**“Okay,”** says Pike with shining white-gold eyes,  **“come on back now.”** Her voice sounds impossible, inescapable, like the tide rising as her power flickers up and pulls them both under. Around the two of them, transparent like heat but not burning, a gauzy cocoon softens the world outside until it bleeds like watercolors. Keyleth feels, for a moment, seven years old again and curled up in her father’s large chair under a pile of blankets, comforted. Then the grief bubbles up again and she blinks  _ hard,  _ looks down and away. When Pike speaks again, the world is how it always is, and most of the comfort is gone.

  “Hey,” the gnome says softly, “you’re okay. We’re here in the camp outside Kraghammer, you’re alright.”

  “I’m sorry,” Keyleth starts, voice choked with something awful, but Pike shakes her head.

  “We all have bad dreams sometimes. It’s okay.” And Pike straightens up and smiles like the sunrise and goes to wake Grog and  _ maybe she’s right,  _ Keyleth thinks,  _ maybe it can be okay. Once the dragon dies, maybe it will feel okay. _

  (Scanlan watches through half-lidded eyes, still feigning sleep. Keyleth’s rage is a howling thing, a long dissonant chord screaming out - he has no idea how to start untangling it.)

  Vax says, “Come on, Stubby,” and Vex is standing up even before she’s opened her eyes, reaching out for a hand. Her brother hauls her the rest of the way up and grins as she rubs her eyes, one hand coming up for her hair and frowns. “Let me fix it,” he offers, reaching for the messy end of the braid. His sister hums in agreement.

  Percy wakes worried, still faintly smelling smoke. The wreck of the Fire Ashari clings to his clothes and he thinks,  _ Whitestone,  _ first, because it’s always his first thought. Whitestone and Cassandra, his two worries. Well, three now, or perhaps four, with this gods problem and the dragon issue. He’s not often hoodwinked, not Percy, he’s supposed to do the hoodwinking. Cleverness is meant to be his first and (usually) his alone. 

  “Hey,” Pike’s voice pulls Grog from sleep, “hey, buddy.”

  “Yeah? We going?” 

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  The entrance to Kraghammer lurks in the distance and the ground vibrates very faintly, the echo of a heartbeat, just once. 

\---

  There’s no sky in Kraghammer, though the dwarves don’t seem to have a problem dealing with this. Vex feels herself glancing around, getting the lay of the land. Percy is on her left, a little behind, watching too. Vax walks ahead and his shadow stretches out long behind him in the low light, falling around Vex’s feet protectively. She sees how part of his attention is on Pike and Grog as well, and it’s so good to see him making friends - Vex does worry sometimes. Behind her, Percy stumbles a little and lets out a soft curse. Without looking, she reaches back a hand and, with a little hesitance, he takes it. She guides him through the almost-darkness.

  Pike watches the citizenry of Kraghammer go about their lives, watches the Carvers at the corners. She can  **_see_ ** the law around them, the role in seeking justice, and normally this would be a welcome thing but she needs them to stop watching so closely, doesn’t want to risk Vax’s strangeness or Keyleth’s strange shifting coming through. So Pike reaches within, brings a little of her own shine to the surface, just under her skin, a beacon of truth and justice and  _ Nothing to see here, officer, have a nice day! _ Grog hums behind where she’s leading the charge, and she drops back to be even with him and Scanlan. 

  “What’s up?”

  “I know we’re busy, but y’know, maybe we should get a drink,” her best friend says, looking off to the side where Keyleth walks, silent. “It’d be good to, uh, figure out what we wanna do.” He glances to Scanlan for support, and the other man jumps in.

  “That sounds like just the thing! A bit of ale, a story or two with the locals, maybe they’ve got something useful to tell us.” 

_ When did I become the leader here,  _ Pike wonders before pushing it away. “Sure, sounds good. Can you find a place?”

  “Oh yeah,” Scanlan drawls, “I can always find a place.”

  A breeze whips up from the deep streets, with a faint scent under the underground smell that makes the twins stop, heads turning in unison. 

  “It’s here,” Vex breathes, “somewhere.”

  They separate after that, seeking answers, seeking a way deeper - out of all of them, no one’s ever actually been to Kraghammer.

  (Grog groans, reaching  **_in,_ ** making something solid from something not-solid, like clay. A moment of effort, of looking for the connections between them all and making sure they line up like he knows they’re supposed to. Really, these guys would be lost without him and Pike.)

\---

  Percy splits off, searching for an official of some sort to interrogate; Keyleth walks with him, not eager to talk to anyone.

  Kinship is not something Percy expected to feel with anyone very quickly, but the cogs in his head are clicking together, gears turning, and maybe the Fire Ashari wasn’t her Whitestone, but they were clearly important, clearly  _ hers,  _ and he understands something about losing that.

\---

  It feels like they’ve known each other forever, all of the sudden, when Scanlan and Vex sit very obviously at one end of the tavern. It’s like they’ve done this a hundred times, his boasting grin and her laugh drawing curious people their way, luring in stories. She tosses a gold dexterously to the to the bartender, an easy arc, and calls for a round for all their new friends.

  Burt Reynolds, Esq. and chronicler of all stories dragon-related and his traveling companion Vex Dragonslayer, a dangerous and intriguing lady reel them all in, charming and confusing in turns. Anything fantastical can get you a drink and a seat at the table, come on in, tell us  _ everything.  _

  It gets them a lot of stories, three new jokes and one Scanlan already knew, and one very interesting rumor about the mines. In the opposite corner, Vax sits with Pike and Grog and tells them everything he can about Krieg, about the way he knows dragons fly and fight and die. Pike nods seriously and Grog thinks  _ huh, I could do that. _

  Vex catches her brother’s eye as she’s laughing charmingly at a miner’s besotted goodbye, twisting her hand in a wave. Beside her, Scanlan smiles and promises very seriously in a squeaky scholarly voice that he will take all of these pieces of dwarven heritage into account as he writes the tale, shall they toast to dragons and to dragonslaying - his eyes catch the candlelight for a second and a snoring man at the end of the bar calls out the first line of a popular song in a guttural voice, catching the other merry patrons up in it. The questionable singing covers the sound of everyone’s exit.

  “Lady Vex Dragonslayer,” Scanlan declares, “I’ve never worked with a finer accomplice.”

  “Well,” she teases, “I do hope that will be taken into account as you write the tale, good scribe.”

  “But of course!” He bows, gallant.

  Pike claps enthusiastically at the show, laugh filling up the alley they’ve ducked into. Grog watches, a little unsure why they’re still faking, but it’s making Vax smile as well. Probably a good thing all ‘round.

  “We’d better go and find the others,” Vax says, “if the Lady Dragonslayer and her stalwart scribe are ready to continue? What were they saying about those mines?”

\---

  Keyleth watches Percy speak to Nostoc Greyspine, leaning against the office wall he’s talked their way into. Apparently mining’s honest work, true work, and Percy knows something about stone mining and he’s eager to learn about the process of bringing metal out.

  (She is still clutching a scrap of the comfort Pike had worked around her, trying to hold onto the idea of a horizon, a break in the grief and pain and the  _ fury  _ in her. Her arms itch to be wings, her jaw aches to grow more teeth, more dangerous, more useful. She’s losing seconds, wrestling with her own control, blinking back to Percy and Greyspine and the room but slipping down, into the breathless sorrow. She has never hated anything quite this much.)

  They’re walking, now, beginning a tour of the mine, when the rest of their ragtag band shows up. The five are waved in as Greyspine continues to talk, as Scanlan casually mentions hearing about some sort of monsters coming up out of the dark.

  All talk, nothing to worry about, plenty of Carver’s to maintain security,  _ of course.  _ Keyleth blinks and Vax’s hand is on her elbow as he speaks quietly to her, a little ways behind the group. 

  “Are you alright,” he asks in a low voice. “Keyleth. Are you alright?”

  (The lichen on the ceiling rustles, creeping out and across like hands, grasping for something.)

  “I... no. No, but I will be. I have to be, right?” She laughs, awkward and nervous, trying to smother the part of her that’s screaming inside, calling for blood and death and Spring, to tear the world down.

  Vax regards her with sharp eyes, bird eyes, heavy like fate - she turns away. “I just need to kill something, and I’ll be okay.”

  “O....kay. Good short-term solution.”

  By the time Keyleth and Vax catch up, their party has reached the mouth of one of the mining tunnels. That breeze is stronger now, sour with something long gone to rot.

  A reedy groan interrupts Greyspine’s speech about mining and mithral and the superiority of dwarven engineering. Shambling and shuffling out of the shadows, dead things start coming into the light, patches of stone spreading over sewn-together limbs.

  Seven people move forward as one force, and Keyleth, among them, revels.

\---

  Grog watches her tearing through the creatures, hands like talons. His buddy Pike is  _ there  _ and Scanlan and Percy are  _ there  _ and Vex is over  _ there _ and Vax is somewhere, slipping through the edges of the battle. He can sorta see them all, can watch them move together. And Keyleth - she’s sharp, all edges, carrying a rage into battle that she doesn’t know how to use.

  That’s fine. Grog can find someone to teach her.

  One of her brother’s daggers skitters across a patch of rough grey skin and he catches Vex’s eye before twisting away again into his own shadow, confused. She looses another arrow, listens to the damage, a forceful sound where she expected a cut to happen. She thinks, she thinks, she ducks behind an outcropping and thinks - 

  “The dragon,” Vex whispers as three more creatures scramble up the tunnel. “An echo of corruption.” The words burn like acid in her mouth, like a hundred sour things, dead leaves and mud and memory. Still, “Pike! Do you have something for sickness? For corruption?”

  (Pike’s mace glows and her face is lit with a shine of righteousness, with the kind of justice that breaks limbs and topples dynasties.)

  Pike twirls her mace, stirring the tide of the battle, the rhythm of blood and bone crunching - for a second she’s in Papa Wilhand’s yard, and he’s saying to her “It’s good to protect people, my Pike, don’t let them give you any trouble!” - and when she opens her eyes they glow like a lighthouse, gold and white and undeniable as her whole body lifts into the air one foot, two, three feet, curls into a ball and pushes **_out_** with all the self she has.

  A wave of light crashes over the battle like a window breaking, like a huge gong ringing, and the stone in the creatures fractures, grinds,  **_shatters._ ** The bodies fall with heavy thuds.

  Keyleth lets out a wordless cry of frustration, and Grog follows his instincts, just like always, and slams her bodily farther down the tunnel.

  “Well,” Percy says, cleaning his glasses, “this is certainly... a situation.”

\---

  Keyleth snarls, claws at him, lost in it all and it’s easy to dodge, easier than when she was a tiger. She’s right up on that edge, Grog knows, and he’s got to pull her back or she’s going to fall. The goliath grabs her by the shoulders and she screams in his face. He shouts back, louder, full of won fights and lost fights and if she could just  **_listen-_ **

  She quiets, breathing hard, shoulders sagging. He keeps his grip tight, in case it’s temporary, in case she loses herself again. But he sees the awareness coming back slowly, and waits. 

  (Keyleth is drowning inside, Pyrah smoking like one great pyre, the mountain rising before her, Winter burning her skin with cold, just another creature backed into a corner. Slowly, slowly, the storm in her quiets, tornadoes uncoiling and she feels - empty,  _ desolate. _ )

  Grog waits until she stops for real, hands on her shoulders to ground her, a tether to the world. Her antlers slip sideways on her brow and she reaches up a trembling hand to fix them. She doesn’t look up, just says, “You can let go now.”

  Grog lets one hand go and gentles his grip, a friend’s hand on a shoulder instead of a vise. “You good?”

  “I have- I have no idea if I’m good. You know, it’s funny,” her voice rises, nearing a hysteric register, “I don’t know how to be okay. I don’t know how to start fixing this. I’m so angry, I’ve never been this angry, am I just going to  _ be like this  _ **_forever?”_ **

  “Hey, look.” And he waits again, because he might not be good at solving puzzles or building exploding tubes or whatever, but this is what he  _ does,  _ his strength is in his  _ friends,  _ so he waits for her to look at him. Eventually, she does. “Nah.”

  “What?”

  “Nah, you’re not gonna be like this forever. It’s like this, see, you can stay angry. It’s useful, keeps you fighting. But the way you’re doing this won’t work, so it’s not gonna last.”

  “What do you mean.”

  “You’re like, pushing everything down until you can fight, right? It’s not gonna work. You’re gonna waste all your energy before we get to the big fight.”

  He watches Keyleth frown, confused. “So what do I  _ do  _ with this?”   
_ Oh, shit. Uh. What would Groon say- nah, what would Pike say? _

  Grog shrugs. “You just gotta keep going and deal with your shit as it happens.”  _ Yeah, that’s what she’d say.  _ “Fight harder. Be better. You’re pissed off, right?”

  Keyleth nods.

  “So just, be better in a fight than the thing that’s messing with you, and then when you get there, you kill it. Because  _ fuck,  _ Minxie, keep going like this and you’re gonna be a smear on the ground way before we get to the end of this thing.”

\---

  The yelling has stopped from the tunnel, and Vex keeps an eye on it while checking Vax briskly for injuries. He’s fine, he’s  _ fine,  _ but she has to blink away an image of dark vines twisting around his neck when it comes to her - corruption always makes her think of the Feywild but this is  _ not that  _ and her brother is  _ fine. _ Percy walks carefully to her side once he’s cleaned his gun, looks down at one of the strange corpses at their feet, all stitches and misery.

  “They were empty,” Vax says quietly, “I couldn’t feel it when they died, no souls were moving on.”

  “From what I can tell it’s clear that someone made them,” Percy offers. “Shoddy craftsmanship, though.”

  Vax laughs abruptly, looks at Percy in surprise. “You’ve got a crap sense of humor somewhere, then.”   
  Percy spreads his hands wide and the corner of his mouth ticks up. “You’re the one who laughed.”

  Vex squats down next to one of the bodies, pokes at the broken shards of stone that flaked off at Pike’s will. They’re strange, in an almost organic pattern - she fits together a few of the larger pieces and stops, suspicions confirmed. 

  She wipes her hands on the front of her armor and frowns. “The stone parts, look, they’re like scales.”

  “You think the dragon did this? Or was it something else,” Vax offers with a mirror of her expression.

  Pike comes over and looks at what Vex is seeing, and nods. “The stone sure looks dragony. The sewing, uh, quilting project? Is older than the rest of it though.”

  “I suppose we should head into the tunnels, then,” says Scanlan. He’s looking at the tunnel Grog took Keyleth down, not quite pulling off the carefree smile on his face. 

  “Some maps might be useful,” Percy suggests, “I’ll just ask my friend Mr. Greyspine.” Something dark crosses his face, a shadow of danger in his eyes. “After all, he was  _ so eager  _ to tell me that there were no problems to worry about.”

\---

  Grog and Keyleth wander back around the time Percy reappears, laden with maps and a few schematics for mining equipment, which he stows away. The mining operation is extensively mapped and surveyed, managers loathe to miss a scrap of profit that could be pulled from the mountain. 

  “There doesn’t appear to be anything strange on the plans,” he muses, “but they wouldn’t put the strange things down on paper-”

  The breeze again, almost a wind, whips over the place where the seven of them stand, at the mouth of a tunnel. Vex starts moving forward (her blood is singing for the hunt, the kill,  _ answers _ ) and Vax flickers ahead of her.

  “Maybe you want me to check, Stubby? I know when the dark starts getting weird.” He starts walking down the tunnel. Vex flips him off. He returns in the gesture.

  The group of them start forward into the tunnel, deeper, twisting down into a place without a sky.

\---

  Beneath the city beneath the mountain, beneath the taverns and houses, beneath the mines, a monster of stone coils around the top of a pyramid. Broken bodies with tentacle faces radiate out like tree rings, all crushed and lifeless - all slowly growing patches of stone over their fatal wounds. 

  Umbrasyl tucks his head beneath a wing and sighs, content with the strange horn that will start his new hoard.

  The sound echoes around the cavern, stone on stone and wind between them, radiating up the tunnel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part one of the Underdark mini-arc, done! I hope you all enjoy the stuff that’s still to come! As you can see, Umbrasyl is literally made of a bunch of rocks; we’ll see how safe it keeps him.  
> Next Time: Wow, is dark down here or what? Vex hunts, Pike heals, and Keyleth continues to figure some shit out.  
> I hope you liked this chapter, it was a blast to write! Let me know what you think!


	2. and a voice calling me

  A breeze comes up from deeper in the tunnel as they wind into the ground, smelling of the deep earth and dead things. There’s a low sound of stones shifting, rumbling like distant thunder. Something’s strange about it, Scanlan thinks, but he isn’t sure just what it is. 

  Vax walks a bit ahead of everyone else, watchful, shadow stretching out to cover the walls and floor for a good ten feet around him. It’s hard to tell, in the dark, where he begins and ends. Vex watches her brother and the tunnel around them carefully, focused and clear in an interesting way that Percy hasn’t seen before. She seems certain, every step decisive.

  Glancing back, she catches him looking. The smile that curls across her face is the deadliest thing he’s seen all day, for a moment everything about her is exaggerated, limbs a little too long and teeth a little too sharp, eyes gleaming. He clears his throat and asks, “Enjoying yourself?” 

  The strangeness eases around her eyes; he blinks and she’s normal again, the Vex’ahlia he went to Emon with as she answers, “I like doing things I’m good at, dear. And I am a  _ very  _ good hunter.” 

  “Of course,” Scanlan pipes up, “why else would a humble scribe follow you into such danger, Lady Dragonslayer?”

  She laughs softly, and the conversation continues for a while in stories about dragons and the possible truths and weaknesses in them. Percy listens more than he talks, as Scanlan spins narratives and Vex gives out what facts and tactics she knows.

  In the back of the group, Pike walks next to Keyleth, Grog behind both of them. Keyleth doesn’t seem any... lighter, but Pike is of the opinion that nothing short of time can help with that. Still, she seems calmer, more in control. Whatever talk she had with Grog seems to have done her some good.

  “Hey, um,” Keyleth begins, before stopping.

  “Yeah?” Pike looks up at her, watches the way her green eyes flit around the small space. 

  “Will you guys, like, even once we find the gods,” she doesn’t seem sure how to continue. Lucky for her, Grog does.

  “Help you kill the dragons? Yeah, course,” Grog rumbles. “A fight’s better when you’ve got someone to do it with. An’ the two of us, there’re no better people to fight with.”

  “He’s right, you know,” says Pike, reaching out and taking Keyleth’s hand. “We’re the best there is - and you’ve got our help whether you really want it or not. So don’t go chasing one without us!” With a squeeze, she lets go.

  For the first time since Pyrah, the smile crosses Keyleth’s face feels honest.

\---

  Vax brings them to a stop after a while (could be a few hours, could be more - time feels strange down here, where the only light is torchlight and the occasional glowing mushroom) at what seems like a threshold before the tunnel gets wider. It seems like a threshold, of course, because of the deep gouges taken out of the stone around it. He reels his shadow back so they can better examine the marks left in the stone.

  Vex runs her fingers along the wall, finding a groove wide enough for her entire hand to lay flat against the rock. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, listening and tasting the air, slipping out of herself - the impressions hit her suddenly. 

_ Claws scraping, digging, finding purchase. The weaker stone of the tunnels cracking against her own, because she is a dragon of immeasurable power, pride, belonging, a den no one will take from her. The boundary is here but she can - she can take it all, eventually, can take the world in its entirety. Clouds of dust and shards of stone scraping to the floor. _ She  **_pulls_ ** herself back in, breathing hard.

  Pike is beside her, speaking low and calm as she gets herself under control. “Your brother is just there, and Percy is next to him. They’re trying to figure out if the scratches are a message. You blanked out for a second. Are you alright?”

  “It was here, the dragon came through here,” Vex speaks quickly, exhilarated, “this is going to be a new den, it wasn’t very long ago that the dragon was here, we can catch up to it-”

  “Vex’ahlia,” Keyleth says from a few feet away, “are you alright.”

  (The path stretches for miles in front of a trading caravan, the promise of profit at the end of it. Against a distant purple sky, a werewolf throws back his head and howls out at a tangle of rivers, a warning.)

  Vex pauses, taking stock. “Yes, I’m okay. I’m- it just gets away from me a little sometimes, but I’m back now. And do call me Vex, dear, since we’re all friends now.” Then, louder, “This is a boundary line the dragon drew.”

  Percy frowns a little, confused. “Those weren’t in any of the stories we talked about.”   
  Vex shrugs. “They’re very intelligent, I think they sort of just do whatever they want. If a dragon wants to draw a line, who’s going to stop them?”

  “Us, in this case,” says Vax. And he steps over the lines.

\---

  Something invisible in the air  _ breaks,  _ pops like a soap bubble, and the noise around them is a thousand times louder. The sound moves through the tunnel like a physical thing, like a wave crashing, and for a moment they all stagger as power wraps around their eyes and ears and mouths, a weight so heavy there’s no possibility of breathing under it. Even their torches are smothered by the force, pushed away in the initial blast of it to scatter away into the darkness.

  Scanlan has no desire to go mad under this, no dream of suffocation, and he watches as his people curl inward - grinning Vex Dragonslayer’s face twisted in pain as she claps her hands to her ears and Keyleth howling as she wraps her arms around her head and bends inward and the rest of them in various states of disrepair. His own head throbs, teeth rattling, breathing shallow - he lets the  _ other  _ in him rise up and spill over, ripples of purple light spreading out around them all, moving with the sound and he  _ commands it to  _ **_stop._ **

  In the silence, the light dissipates. Only the faint mushroom glow remains, not enough to even see the edges of the tunnel around them, just enough to see their shapes in the dark. They’re all quiet for a moment, just breathing, listening to the ringing in their ears.

  “What... the hell... was that...” Vax pants.

  “Trap?” Percy offers wearily. “ _ Fuck  _ my head hurts.”

  “Me too,” Vax rakes a hand through his hair. 

  “Boundary lines,” Vex mutters, “so those are... a thing. I’ll. I’ll add that to the list.”

\---

  They rest a few moments before continuing down the tunnel. Or, they continue down the tunnel until they’re all bumping into the walls. And sometimes the ceiling. And each other. In nearly perfect darkness, only Vax seems entirely aware of the space he’s in.

  (The others are managing, but Vax feels - heightened, like he can feel everything in this tunnel, like his shadow could put him anywhere he needs to go, to any shift in the air. He’s  _ here  _ and Vex is  _ here  _ and Percy’s about to bump into her, Pike has a hand on the wall  _ there  _ and Grog’s holding her other hand, which is a workable system until he hits his head, cursing. Scanlan is... Scanlan is  _ there,  _ like two feet behind him, listening to his footsteps as a guide, muttering count of them for Keyleth.)

  After the third time Grog hits his head and lets them all know about it, Keyleth’s voice comes floating through the darkness. 

  “This isn’t working, we need to stop,” she sounds a little rattled, no more rattled than Vax feels after the big sound... trap... thing. “I might be able to do something, but I need a second to focus.”

  Vax stops immediately, which allows Scanlan to bump into him, which lets Vex bump into  _ him,  _ which in turn causes Percy to bump into  _ her,  _ until they’re all standing as an unsteady little group - only Pike and Grog a little ways away.

  “I think this will work best with the wall,” says Keyleth as she opens glowing green eyes, like holes in the fabric of the tunnel.

  “I’ve got that over here,” calls Pike, “just, come on over!”

  Keyleth picks her way across the slightly uneven ground towards Pike’s voice, lets the gnome guide her hand to the stone, and breathes. Her eyes narrow, slits of solid green in the dark, and she  **_wills_ ** the world around them, thinks of Kraghammer and the plants spidering across the walls. Where there was bare stone, from her touch, luminescent lichen sprouts, lacy and delicately gleaming. It gives a very faint blue-green light, and she pushes a little bit more, until it crawls up to the ceiling and hangs down in clumps, like little underground chandeliers. Not enough light to read, but enough to see by if need be.

  ( _ “...Keyle...”  _ she hears an odd echo through the ringing in her ears, but pushes it aside.)

  “Just, grab some I guess,” she says with a shrug, tugging a handful from the wall. “It should work for a while.”

\---

  It’s the third time they’ve stopped for her to grow some new light - the lichen lasts for a while, but once her influence fades it dries to dust and glows no longer - when another wave of dead creatures attack. The ancient, reptile scent of the dragon is thick in Vex’s nose, almost enough to drown everything else out. She gets an arrow into the eye socket of one of the shambling dead, but the sapling that grows from its head is a sickly thing, odd patches of spongy darkness on the bark as it feeds on the corpse.

_ “Dear, sweet, broken,”  _ croons an old familiar voice, slithering like muck into her ears,  _ “lovely Vex-”  _ She starts, whirls to meet burning eyes with an arrow at the ready, but there’s no one there. Vex returns to the battle, jumpy, not waiting for it but a little unsure - she doesn’t hear it again, and the rest of the enemies are dispatched with relative ease.

  After the fighting dies down, Percy winds up at her side. “You okay?” At her quizzical look, he elaborates, “During the fight, you seemed startled.”

  “Fine, darling. An overactive imagination at an inconvenient time, that’s all.” Fenthras tangles around her fingers, curls a tiny vine around her wrist before she puts it away. It’s dark enough down here without the past coming into play.

\---

  The fifth time they stop, Keyleth stumbles a little as the lichen grows, and it doesn’t give off as much light. Pike decides to put her foot down.

  “Okay, enough. We’re stopping to rest.”

  “I’m alright,” Keyleth tries to insist, “we can keep going -”

  “We’re stopping.”

  Grog makes what he’s sure is a very convincing tired sound, stretches and yawns. “I am actually  _ so  _ tired, I think we should  _ stop  _ because of  _ me _ and I want to.”

  “Well, for the big man to say that it must be really serious,” says Vax with a faint smile. His gaze drifts over to Vex, who remains a little jumpy. Something’s wrong there, and he isn’t sure what it is. “We’d better rest.”

  They set up a little camp in an alcove off the main tunnel, around a little pile of all the remains of the plants. It’s not capable of roasting anything, this campfire, but it’ll do to gather around. Grog lays down immediately, because at some point his ingenious false yawns became real as the events of the day set in. His snores fill the space in a comforting way, despite the continued ringing in their collective ears. Keyleth settles down as well, not curled against him but within arms reach, if necessary. If something attacks them in the night it’ll get a face full of Keyleth and Grog - a fate Vax doesn’t envy.

  He stretches out to do the same, to rest, but finds himself staring at the stone above them instead. His mind goes in circles, wondering, worrying,  _ is the Raven Queen dead? Is the whole world doomed - will we be all that’s left of the gods?  _ It is not any kind of legacy he wants. His shadow sinks into the dark around them, lurks at the edges of their dimming light. Here, where the darkness moves thick as honey, he wonders if he’s strong enough to do it, to break the world anew and tear a path back to the side of his goddess. Shadow brushing against each of them, his beloved sister and all the rest... he must be. He has to be. Eventually he drifts, listening to his mother as she hums in his ears. The sound is vivid, for a dream, but he is weary and does not linger on it.

\---

  Keyleth shifts in her sleep, hands shifting from fingers to claws that worry little divots into the stone beneath her. Scanlan sits against the wall, watching everything but also concerned for her, watching her. Keyleth isn’t young, isn’t his daughter, but. She could be his friend, they’ve fought together and he’s killed for her and he doesn’t really know a better way to start a friendship when he thinks about it like that. (His dearest people are his daughter, who tried to kill him; Ioun, who met him when he was  _ all  _ kinds of fucked up; Doc and the Troupe, who he really bonded with after killing all those goblins. Huh.  _ Maybe this is how friends are made.) _

  Vex Dragonslayer settles down beside him, a mystery and a half - she knows enough about dragons to live up to the rumors, but people don’t really talk about her outside of Emon so it’s not like she’s wandering around the continent performing feats of heroism. She’s a good performer, a good liar, and good in a fight; something’s got her just the littlest bit rattled and he’s not sure what it is, but he’s curious. He’s always curious. But Vex just watches Keyleth with a faint frown, so it’s up to him to spark up the conversation.

  “She’s bleeding in there. Not, like, bleeding-bleeding, but,” he keeps his voice low, “I’m a good listener, and when she’s awake it sounds like screaming.” He reaches up and rubs at his aching ears.

  “I- I’m not a healer, darling, but I want to help. It feels good like this, all of us together,” Vex looks away from Keyleth and meets his gaze straight-on. “I just... I want to help.” 

  (The whisper of Fenthras presses around her, the weight of the past, of  _ dear, broken Vex’ahlia,  _ and she keeps expecting to turn and meet someone’s eyes.  _ Shit,  _ her head is aching.)

  Scanlan sighs. “You don’t need to prove that to me, Vex, I’m not doubting. I think we all want this to work.” (Ioun is gone, is dead for all he knows, torn asunder in some way he’ll never be able to put back together again - but Vex is here, now, the group exists in this moment. And he’s surprised at how true it is, that he wants them to work out.)

  Keyleth rolls over, facing away from them, murmuring in her sleep.

  “...yeah... go fortheaxe...” Grog mumbles back.

  Scanlan looks back at Vex. “Maybe just time. And hey, we’re here. If it can be done, the brilliant Vex Dragonslayer can do it.”

  Vex cracks a smile. “Brilliant?”

  “Of course! And charming - I hear three of the dragons she took down were glad she was the one to do it,” he smiles, because stories are something he can offer even as the light around them is fading.

  “I heard she did it all to impress a scribe,” Vex teases, “so that he would write incredible and death-defying tales about her, and songs that would make her known in every castle.”

\---

  Percy’s glasses reflect the gentle glow of the fungus, making him look almost like an insect - spindly limbs and blank, reflective eyes as he runs a worn cloth along Bad News. 

  Beside him, a few feet between them, Pike watches. Percival’s so... meticulous, so in control even when he’s tripping through the tunnels.  _ What would it be like if he broke -  _ but she shakes the thought away. He’s repeated his motions three times now, buffing out scratches and squinting at interlocking parts, fiddling.

  “You should rest too, Percy,” she says.

  As he shifts away, going to stand, the corner of his mouth ticks up into a smile that she might fall for, if she were stupid. “I think I know my limits well enough, but I appreciate your concern. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go talk to Ve-  _ ah.” _

  In his haste to get up, a sharp stone slices deep into his hand - the blood welling up looks strange in the near-darkness, almost black as it drips from the heel of his palm.

  (In the ringing of his ears, some old familiar voice croons  **“Percival,”** corruption in each syllable. He goes still, suddenly feeling hunted.)

  “Percy? Hey, your hand - can you hear me? Sit down, let me look at it.”

  (The tugging on his elbow feels far away, as the shadows shift oddly in the glow. It’s just so  _ bloody  _ dark down here and the old voice is so loud in his ears.)

  Pike watches the flat reflection of his glasses for awareness, and resolves - the cut is minor and he didn’t ask for help but she’s Pike Trickfoot, she helps whoever the fuck she wants - “Percy, come with me and  **_sit down.”_ **

  The tunnel brightens a little as Pike is momentarily wreathed in a faint glow, like sunlight through crystals, reflected on water. Percy goes with her, dazed and still bleeding as she eases him down against a different section of the wall.

  Scanlan and Vex glance up from their conversation but Pike waves them off. It’s fine. She sits down and takes Percy’s large hand in both of her own and  **_wills,_ ** a spark of power dancing from her hand across his, warm as she wipes the blood away with a rag. Percy watches her, a little mystified. He has no idea how to do what she’s just done.

  (He still faintly hears the voice, but it’s farther away, lost in Pike’s clearly practiced movements. He should, he should, it’s good manners to- )

  “Thank you,” he manages, internally scrambling for something clever to say. Unfortunately, what comes out is, “Why did you do that?”

  Pike hums a moment, considering. Then, “We’re working together, and you needed help. Plus, I’d like us to all be friends.” She stands up, tucking the rag away, and smiles at him.

  “Get some rest, Percy. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

\---

  They’re rested when they pack up in the morning, but Scanlan is uneasy. Something is going on, has been going on since they hit that first trap - but before he can really  **_listen_ ** they’ve come upon the next cluster of dead things and -

  That’s his daughter’s face. 

  He blinks, snarls out a spell at a different one, and when he looks back it’s not.  Of course it’s not, Kaylie’s nowhere near here. He would know. He would  _ know,  _ okay? He would know if she were- it’s unthinkable.

  For a moment, as Percy chooses his targets with the clash of weapons and shouts of battles in his ears, he hears Cassandra screaming his name. He falls back against his cover, eyes seeking, desperate; but he doesn’t see her.  _ Why would she even be here? It doesn’t make sense at all - something is wrong. _ When he pops back up to fire he does not see any white hair among the enemies, and he does not hesitate to kill.

  Keyleth watches her mother come up out of the darkness to stare at her with disappointed eyes.  _ You’re meant to be the hope of your people,  _ Vilya seems to say,  _ so why have they died?  _ A heavy swing catches her from behind and knocks her breathless against the floor - when she looks up, her mother is gone.

  Grog cleaves through Stonejaw Strongjaw and whirls on Kevdak, who tried to keep him down and failed a hundredfold. He doesn’t know why they’re here, but hey, might as well kill ‘em. Have to do better than this to put him off his game. They look different dead, though, not like the goliaths he remembers. Just like weird tentacle-guys and the same enemies as before.

  Vex fires another arrow and ignores the approving voice that comes behind her after each kill, the one that urges her to just finish this fight and _come home._ _It’s been so difficult for you, sweet. Come back to me, back where you belong, we are alike, you and I._ He won’t be there, when she turns around. And she won’t fire behind her, won’t risk hitting one of her own.

  Pike shuts her eyes and just fights blind, because she can’t - she can’t  _ do this  _ if she has to watch everyone she’s ever saved die at her hands. 

  Keyleth calls down a storm of fire that blazes across them, turns corpses to ash and dead things to ash until all that’s left are the little stone patchwork-pieces, shattering as they hit the ground. Her mother watches her with cold eyes, unruffled and unburnt. 

  In the corner of the chamber they’ve been fighting in, Vax stumbles out of the shadows and vomits into an ancient vase. He’s even more pale than always. “Fuck,” he whispers as he wipes bile from his chin, “fuck.”

  If that were his daughter - if Kaylie was dead it would kill him, and he’s still breathing, so she must be too. So that’s not real, something about it wasn’t real, and Scanlan doesn’t even wait for someone to call an all-clear before he throws himself into the song around them. He  **_listens_ ** and pushes deeper, through the ringing that remained in his ears for far too long and he hears it - curled around each of them like a net, a low, ringing whisper. It pulses in time with the dragon’s exhale but it isn’t the same, something augmenting, a player where there shouldn’t be one. Well, Scanlan can be that as well.

_ You want us, fucker? Wake up earlier, because the old Shorthalt countercharm doesn’t sleep!  _

   And he puts his flute to his lips and lets out a blast of arcane power - around each of them, himself included, magic shatters like a pane of glass.

\---

  It would be nice if there had been time to celebrate that feat of magical skill, but the sound draws more attention and the combat picks back up again. They must be getting close, because the fighting is steady and there are more of those tentacle-faces now, mixed in with the regular monstrosities.

  Pike glows with an aura of shifting light, and anything that gets a hand on her soon doesn’t have a hand. Unfortunately, it often ends up splattering her face, which,  _ gross.  _ Grog calls out challenges as they move down the tunnel - because  _ this? This is nothing. _ Together, they lead the group toward the end of the line, the mouth of a cavern opening up ahead. 

  Vex pulls arrows from dead enemies as they move on and feels - and feels - She is a hunter of dragons, Vex’ahlia is, she is Lady Dragonslayer and it sings in her hands and the cadence of her footsteps. This is a glorious hunt and she will reach the conclusion, and then she will hunt the next thing, and then she will hunt the next thing, until the whole of her domain is made safe. Scanlan catches the look on her face and thinks that some scribe may write that song after all, when all of this has ended.

  Vax is everywhere down here, is where he needs to be when he needs to be there - the darkness eats him, or he dives in - driving a dagger into a skull or redirecting a strike. It’s  unnerving, fighting these things but oh, he is so very skilled.

  Keyleth lights her hands up and finds her way to Percy’s side, watching his back as the tide of enemies swells around them. He’s methodical, meticulous as he fires shot after shot. She’s blazing, fury and grief but focused and absolutely lethal.

\---

  The stone dragon atop the pyramid shifts, wakes, sees the uninvited guests in his den.

  Umbrasyl flaps his great stone wings once, twice, rises into the air of the enormous cavern and roars. Dead mindflayers and other unlucky corpses surge out of the darkness at his call, pouring toward the group.

  Beneath the dragon, a horn seeps dark whispers and dissonant voices into the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that’s chapter two! Nothing like a little found family bonding while they descend to fight a dragon and have various magic-induced hallucinations.  
> Next Time: The Gang Fights a Dragon (Or: I Try to Write a Good Confrontation)  
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I know I’m a slow writer but there’s still a lot of this fic to come!   
> Let me know what you think with a comment! I’m really liking how this story is working out so far.


	3. not to be tied to an old stone grave

  The ziggurat looms like a monster in the large underground space, various torches around it providing just enough light for the sharp angles of the stone sides to seem even taller than they are. It looks like the staircase for some giant creature to walk. 

_   It rather suits a dragon,  _ Percy muses as Keyleth shouts a warning at him. Everything vanishes into darkness, abruptly, as tentacles cover his face and a sharp mouth begins to scrape at the base of his skull - he’s unable to pull away but he doesn’t need to, not if he can just  _ reach  _ for his bloody pistol - he gets a hand around it when the creature holding him tenses and shudders, releasing his head and slumping to the ground. 

  Keyleth seizes one of his arms and drags him away from the smoking corpse, the flames in her other hand casting odd shadows on her face. 

  “Get somewhere with  _ cover,  _ Percy,” she orders sharply. “You can’t just - don’t get distracted!”

  She’s right, and he returns to the task at hand. There’ll be time for architecture later. Probably. (He didn’t even mean to look at it in the first place, not really, but there’s something about the shape that’s oddly familiar. Stone rising up out of the dark and blood and the sound of battle filling the air; it’s an old, unpleasant memory.)

\---

  Vax ducks a snap of the dragon’s jaws as Umbrasyl roars, shaking the air and launching higher, out of immediate range. He hides among shadows and stalactites, and though Vax knows where he is (Vax knows where every shadow is, down here) he leaves it be in favor of diving into the mass of enemies, daggers whirling. He fights his way to his sister’s side, taking in the grin on her face, the glow in her eyes.  _ She’s okay, she’s fine. _ The dead keep coming.

  Bowstring singing in her grasp, Vex’ahlia rains arrows, rains death back down onto the undead. It’s exhilarating, the fight, the kind of adrenaline you feel when you could die. Grog hollers his thanks when she pierces two of the enemies surrounding him on the same arrow. She wants so very badly for this group to work because  _ Gods, it’s intoxicating.  _ Still, she isn’t completely caught up; she keeps glancing towards the ceiling, knowing, knowing that with dragons you always have to look up. Rustling around up there, beyond her eyesight,  _ something  _ is happening.

  (There’s something about dragons that almost makes Vex nostalgic, makes her think of Emon and Gilmore and her brother, makes her taste victory toasts and hum popular songs. But it’s more than that, really, because on a deeper level killing something powerful is all about protecting something else, something more important - it’s a righteous kind of chore, a traditional sort of slaying. The buried parts of her wake up, stretch in her muscles, growl at the forefront of her thoughts.  _ Hunter,  _ they whisper,  _ hunter, protector, killer.  _

  Here in battle, she doesn’t waste time pushing the instinct away. Here in battle, she doesn’t waste  _ anything.) _

  Above them all, a mass of stone shakes loose from the ceiling and spikes begin to fall all around them, crushing underlings as they draw boundaries, as they start to separate the group.

\---

**_“Move,”_ ** Grog thunders, hurling Keyleth out of the way as the rocks fall. Yeah, he throws her right into a group of snarling zombie shitheads, but she can take it. He’s not sure she could take a fuckton of rock crushing her to death, is all. A flex of his  **_will_ ** and he’s across the space, cracking his fist across the face of some asshole that’s bothering Scanlan. The gnome thanks him, probably, but Grog doesn’t stick around for the whole award speech. He’s in his element right  _ now,  _ as the battle turns around him, as he takes blows just to return them with his axe a hundred times stronger. 

  “Grog!” His buddy Pike’s voice is like some kind of fucking beacon in the dark. He starts moving to her side.

  (Keyleth tears an illithid’s head from its neck before it can go in the direction of Percy’s cover. Scanlan calls out a taunt and on the far end of the battle Vax feels himself get sharper for a moment, a little extra deadly. Everything falls a little more into place.)

  “Yeah?”

  “You good?” There’s sweat on her brow but a smile on her face, the monstah. Rocks continue to fall.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Yeah!” When the word leaves her mouth some of the scratches on his chest scab over. Aw, Pike. Always worrying. 

  Pike’s mace slams into a patchwork-monster, cracking a few... ribs? Maybe? It’s pretty hard to tell with these things. When it stops moving, she looks around more, chancing just a second to breathe. The shouts of spells and sound of hits continues, but she realizes something’s missing, something huge. The sky isn’t falling anymore, or, it’s mostly stopped. 

  At the far end of the cavern, almost in slow motion, one last stone spike falls through the air, completing a chain that stretches as far from the base of the pyramid as she can see. 

  Umbrasyl  _ exhales,  _ power sparking in the sound, and dark arcane energy fizzles between each spike like lightning. 

_   Well, what was the point of that?  _ Pike has time to think, before realizing,  _ Oh, shit. _ A skeleton staggers a little too close to one of the spikes and a bolt of energy snaps out, turns it to ash.

_ Oh, shit. We’re not all on this side. _

\---

  “Where are the others,” Percy calls when he sees Vax emerge from yet another dark corner to stab something three times in quick succession. Very capable of violence, this group of people. It’s strange, because the amount of foes  _ had been  _ slowing down for a little while, presumably being whittled down by the group as a whole. Now they’re coming faster again, and in more concentrated groups. 

  “Some kind of barrier,” Vax responds before he’s suddenly right next to Percy, kicking a tentacled face in with a  _ crunch.  _ “My sister’s on this side with us, but the rest...”

  “Ah, alright. Well, more for us, I suppose?” The smile on his face doesn’t feel very nice at all, but Vax doesn’t seem to mind. “Do you think you could get her? This spot’s pretty defensible and we clearly need that right now.” He’s behind an outcropping in the stone wall, pretty well concealed on two sides. Shame that enemies keep coming on the third one.

  Vax’s eyes flit around the space, taking it in. “Sure.”

  Six seconds and two obliterated skeletons later, he returns with Vex’ahlia in tow.

  “Right,” says Percy, eyes wild behind his glasses, “here’s what I’m thinking...”

\---

  Even as he calls out a spell, even as he sings Grog’s axe a little sharper or Pike’s hits harder or Keyleth’s focus just a little more clear, Scanlan continues to hear the low whispering at the edges of his hearing range. The strange power slips through his grasp, no matter what clever turn of phrase he uses to cage it, shredding through every defense he raises around them all in as much time as it takes for him to raise the next one. This can’t last, not really. And if he fails... well, if he fails they’ll all just go back to going mad.  _ No big deal, right? Just mind-shattering sounds, hallucinations, and eventual death. _

  So he has to find the source of it, he  _ has  _ to, because something’s going to give and he doesn’t want it to be himself. Eyes searching, Scanlan stops moving. Their side of the battle seems to be calming anyhow, with Pike mopping up a few final skeletons. Keyleth prowls the edges, as close to the crackling barrier as she dares just  _ waiting  _ for an opening. Grog is wrestling a last hulking... necromantic... whatever to the ground.

  When he steps outside of it, when he  **_listens,_ ** it’s easy - like tracing ripples back to a thrown stone. He turns, tilting his face up, up, and  _ there it is,  _ seeping out corruption, augmenting the dragon. Right at the top of the ziggurat, reaching out influence, something terrible to help the dragon do dragon things.  _ Hey, where is the dragon, anyway? _

  Behind him, the ground  _ shudders  _ as a great stone form lands on what had been a pile of undead corpses. Now, they were dust. The dragon towers above them and Scanlan can see, swirling over the scales like an oil slick is the foreign magic. 

  Of the four of them, he’s seen himself, Grog, and Keyleth do decent amounts of killing. Pike, though... he thinks back to the first fight, the way that she brought light down, wrangled it like a hurricane and  _ shattered.  _ That’s. That was very impressive, and it just might be exactly what they need now.

  So he calls out to her as Grog and Keyleth race towards the dragon (who the hell runs  _ toward  _ a dragon he isn’t sure, but then that is what they came here to do) and she spits off, coming to his side.

  “I need your help,” Scanlan tells her, eyes glowing bright purple. “And I need you to trust me.”

  “Sure,” she says, panting a little from the fight so far. “What’ve you got?”

  “There’s something at the top of that damn thing that’s making all of this worse. Up for some destruction?” 

  She looks back, momentarily conflicted as Grog shouts expletives at the dragon.

  “It will help,” Scanlan’s desperate now, with the whispers dogging at his heels. It’s harder and harder to keep them from the others.

  Under blood and dust and sweat, Pike’s face hardens with determination. “Let’s do it, then.”

  And Scanlan forgets showmanship for a moment, as he sketches a glyph in the air and grabs her hand, pulls her through an arcane doorway to the top step of the pyramid. Then he forgets just about everything else, as the rush of  _ rage  _ from the horn in front of them nearly knocks him off his feet.

\---

_ This is no place for a forest,  _ Vex thinks as she slips out of their makeshift shelter,  _ but it’s the best idea we’ve got.  _

  Vax strides out bold as brass, and the latest group of skeletons and illithids and whatever the fuck else descends on him. He’ll get her as much time as he needs, no matter what it takes to do it.

  (“What you did with the trees in Emon,” Percy had asked, “can you do it again? How much control do you have over them?”

  “Yes, but I don’t see how exactly that will  _ help _ in this situation. I can do it, but they only listen to me for so long.”

  Percy looked at her carefully, clearly wondering exactly what that meant, already theorizing things about it before he visibly put the thought away. “The environment we’re in now is familiar to them and unfamiliar to us, but we’re figuring it out because we’re such smart people. If we can  _ flip  _ that on them - “

  Vax smiled, then. “They seem pretty stupid, yes.”)

  Her brother could handle himself, but did he have to be so  _ cavalier  _ about it? Didn’t he know she worried, that she was worried enough without him walking face-first into enemies?  _ Can’t stop now,  _ she reminded herself as she climbed a nearby rock formation,  _ we’re committed. _

  This is no place for a forest, but Vex’ahlia breathes in the scent of streams and clean air as she draws her bowstring back. She  **_pulls_ ** on that well of power within herself and looses as many arrows as she can into the ground around the space they’ve claimed and grows a forest of death.

\---

  Keyleth and Grog are battering rams, really, are heavy hitters. Grog has his axe and she has magic. Fighting together is good, too, means they can watch each other’s backs. 

  It’s not quite  _ enough,  _ though, when the dragon shudders and the chips they’ve made in the huge stone chest fill in with some kind of dark, writhing magic.

  The second time it happens, Keyleth joins Grog in his swearing.

  The third time it happens, they both get a little grimmer. If the dragon can just keep fighting forever - well, the two of them  _ can’t,  _ and Pike and Scanlan are who knows where, and the other three are stuck on the other side of the barrier.

  It’s Grog against a mountain of a dragon, Grog against the world with a friend at his back; Keyleth looks a little tired so he gets angrier, strikes twice as hard and more recklessly.

\---

  Scanlan sways beside her as the horn comes into view, floating almost innocently in the air. Pike can taste the corruption in the breeze that flows around them, something she had chalked up to dragon wings and now realizes has come from whatever this is.

  She turns to him to ask what he expects her to  _ do,  _ exactly, but before she can speak he falls forward onto his knees, hands clutching at the sides of his head. His mouth is moving but his words are faint. She leans closer.

_ “Get out,”  _ he’s saying, “get out getoutget _ outgetout _ **_getout.”_ **

  Pike reaches for his shoulder, tries several things to snap him out of it but nothing’s  _ working, why isn’t this working -  _ she almost gets caught up in a swell of panic before one of his hands snaps out to grab her wrist.

_ “Destroy it,”  _ Scanlan enunciates carefully, as if speaking through great pain,  _ “you have to destroy it.” _

  Pike knows how to talk to hurt people, so she doesn’t say  _ I don’t know if I can.  _ Instead, she just says, “Okay.”

  Her boots scrape against the ground as every ounce of malevolence in this thing tries to push her back, push her  _ away -  _ she’s Pike goddamn Trickfoot, though. Light radiates off of her like curls of smoke as she walks toward this thing, as she reaches out a hand and  **_reaches_ ** for it.

\---

  They’re stumbling through the dark, the remnants of this force. They have no idea at all how to deal with the change in terrain, and with some effort Vex can order the trees to be a little more  _ unfriendly,  _ a little  _ hungrier _ for what nourishment can be found in rotting flesh. 

  It’s pitch dark among the strange trees, and Vax is fast in it, doesn’t need to see, doesn’t need to think. He lets the dark carry him away, lets himself bring death with his daggers and a steady hand. One of the skeletons he’s about to dismantle abruptly vanishes as...  _ holy shit that tree just ate him.  _ Then it’s on to the next one.

  Percy picks off whatever stragglers he sees, but this is enough, he’s certain of it. The last wave would’ve been the biggest, would’ve overwhelmed him entirely without this plan. Lucky thing, then, that he’s so smart.

  Vex holds, she holds, she holds for just a moment more. And then she holds for the next one.

\---

  Pike’s never done this before, not really. She’s never tried to unmake something. She’s not even sure that she can, it didn’t work on Craven Edge and this is something far more powerful.

  Behind her, Scanlan calls out,  **_“You can.”_ **

She reaches out and  **_tears_ ** at the very base particles of it,  **_commands_ ** it to vanish; her own voice sounds strange in her ears as she orders,  **_“You have no place here.”_ **

  The horn shakes, shrieks, tries to tether itself to her but she is unmoved.  Pike is light and justice and the rage of the righteous, she does not bend if she does not wish to.

  There’s a blinding flash of light, a rushing sound as air fills up a previously occupied space. Scanlan struggles to his feet just in time to catch Pike as she goes flying back. Where the horn was, there is nothing. Where he heard it, there is nothing.

  In the chestplate of Pike’s armor, there’s a horrible tear in the metal. She curls inward heedless of his arms, and makes an awful sound.

\---

  The dragon staggers abruptly, the magic that was protecting it vanishing entirely between one breath and the next. 

_Now, it has to be now,_ _this is it,_ Grog lifts his axe to swing at the neck and Umbrasyl tries to fly away, he really does, but - 

  Keyleth’s there, casting something that has ivy sprouting in his joints, under his scales and through his body, completely immobilizing.

  The axe comes  _ down  _ and Umbrasyl knows no more.

  Grog kicks at the immense stone head. “Y’know, I thought it’d be more... y’know, rahhh, magical explosion, dramatic as fuck kind of shit.”

  “Yeah,” Keyleth says through her laughter, “yeah I know what you mean.”

  Grog goes to say something more, but stops, head tilted to the side. He must hear something, because a look of... fear crosses his face. “I gotta go.”

  “Wait, what do you - “ but he’s already gone, leaping up the huge step-like sides of the ziggurat somehow.

  Keyleth spares the dragon one more disdainful look before turning towards  _ wait, is that trees? _

\---

  Vex holds, she grits her teeth and the trees pull angrily against her control, eager to just grow, to consume and consume her with them, when all of the movement she’s been aware of among them stops, corpses again corpses as they slump into the devouring roots. At last, at last, she lets go of her connection and the trees melt, dissolve in on themselves until all that’s left is one great puddle of gore and plant matter. Beside her, suddenly, is Vax.

  “Alright, Stubby?”

  “Yes, I- yeah. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  Percy’s white hair appears below them, as he tentatively leaves the collection of rocks he had begun to consider his final resting place. Keyleth slips through the gap in the large spikes of rock that bisected the battle, moving towards them. 

  Beneath her weariness, Vex feels a deep satisfaction. That’s one dragon down.

\---

  Grog stares at Pike’s shaking form, slackjawed. Scanlan’s looking at her too, with this kind of horror in his face that Grog just doesn’t wanna think about. He strides over and picks her up as gently as he can.

  “Wake up,” he starts in a careful voice, the one she uses on people who are all fucked up. 

  “It hurts,” she mumbles, a hand twitching towards her chest. 

  “Yeah,” he watches her face, sees how it’s slick with sweat and grimy, sees her jaw clenching. “What d’you need?”

  “I don’t know if I can - “

  “Course you can! You’re a monstah!” Whatever she wants to do, she can fucking do. That’s his buddy Pike.

  Scanlan pipes up, “I’m almost out but I’ve got a little left in the tank; I’m not as accomplished healer as the lovely lady, but I’ve picked up a few tricks in my time.”

  “Do it.”

  Under his efforts, Pike’s face gains a little more color and she opens her eyes, smiling faintly. “Thanks, I think I can do a little more. And,” she glances at Grog, quick like he won’t notice, “maybe a drink?” 

  She’s trying to make him feel better, but it’s not a bad idea so he nods.

  Scanlan smiles, offers, “Well, we just killed a dragon. We can probably get free drinks off half of Kraghammer now.”

\---

  So, they find themselves back in the tavern in Kraghammer, bruised but not as tired as they had been. The journey back took half the time it took to get there, with no magic confusing them and no enemies left in their path. Still, they slept before entering the city. A long rest like that does wonders for the body.

  Pike leans heavily on whoever’s next to her, usually Grog but sometimes one of the others. She’s got a brave face on, but each of them can tell that thing’s aren’t quite perfect. Percy watches her over the latest round of drinks, pretending that what he feels is suspicion rather than concern.

  “Alright, alright,” Scanlan calls over the bar patrons, “that’s all the story we’ve got voices to tell! Please, though, send as many drinks as you like.” The crowd he’s gathered laughs and begins to disperse, eager to spread gossip or add onto the tale. (What he told them wasn’t true, of course, because the best stories never are. Also, the whole ‘you had a crazy army of undead living under your city’ thing wouldn’t go over as well as the more traditional dragon fight he painted for them.)

  He returns to the corner of the bar they’ve claimed, sliding into the seat beside Keyleth. Something gets a little more serious in his face as he takes them all in.

  “So, as I was telling our druidic friend here  _ before  _ all the dragon stuff kicked in, I have an idea about where to go for more... divine inspiration.”

  It was easy enough to put aside over the last few days, underground, but at his mention Vax leans forward with sharp eyes. Pike brightens up a little too, listening. 

  “So here’s what we do...” Scanlan begins, and the rest of their conversation is swallowed by the noise of the crowded tavern.

\---

_ Interesting.  _ She hadn’t actually expected them to kill Umbrasyl.  _ Interesting and unpleasant.  _

  Raishan makes a note to go groveling back to Thordak’s side, to bring up these new pests and suggest a few courses of action. Maybe they’ll all kill each other.  _ Wouldn’t that be something? _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we are DONE with the UNDERDARK!!!!! For a while I thought we’d never get out of there. I hope the big battle stuff was interesting, I’m working on that in my writing. Keeping all the moving parts moving is a challenge but I am eager to keep it all going.  
> Next will be the Pike interlude, which I’m excited for! The little interludes are actually my favorite part of this series to write.  
> Thank you so much for reading, leave a comment to let me know what you think! See you all next time!


End file.
